Listener Mail: Rejoice in the Sun

may have gotten that next time. I think I've seen some card sharks wearing those things. Yeah, well they're trying to hide their expressions, right, so they wear like a hat and sunglasses and who knows what else at the table? Did any poker players just full on wear ski mask? I think it's frowned upon. I think it's frowned upon. But I'm sure that this, this new poker habit for Carney has been inspired by the card playing robots of

Silent Running, one of our favorite films. Oh yeah, that's right, there's some there's some great card card playing robots in that one Hue we do and Louis Um those are some wonderful scenes and in large part because they're like a little bit they're a little bit clunky, you know, they're not They're not smooth. Those robots are the way that they interact with humans in their environment, but in a way that felt very real, very endearing. I loved it. Well,

that'll come back up later on Robbert. You ready to jump right in? Should I read this message from Cody? Go for it? Okay, here is a sort of correction slash clarification on the Jupiter episode. At least from Cody's perspective, this starts high Joe plus Robert. I'm currently listening to part one of the Jupiter episodes, and as a recovering astronomer, I had to dash off this message when talking about whether our solar system is unusual or abnormal is compared

to other planetary systems. It is crucial to keep in mind that the detection techniques that astronomers used to find extra solar planets preferentially biases their detections toward large planets close to their parents star. In other words, planets that tug a lot on their star or include its light on short periods. And to expand on that a little bit.

So some of the main ways we've had in the past of checking whether another star has an exoplanet orbiting it is by things like the radial velocity test, which checks to see if the host star is wobbling basically by the gravitational pull of a large planet orbiting it, or by the yeah, as Cody alludes to hear, the

occlusion of its light. So like, if there is a transit where a planet passes in front of a star from our perspective, we will proceed that as a brief dimming of the star as the planet passes between the star and our observation technology. Uh and and there's some other methods as well, but those are some of the main ones. And you can see why it would be easier to detect planets that are larger and have certain types of certain types of orbital orientations based on those

sorts of methods. But Cody continues, in fact, the upper limit on the orbital periods for the current detection regime is roughly half the period of a typical postdoctoral fellowship go figure. So it just isn't accurate to say that our Solar system is unusual, since we simply don't know. It may in fact be the most common kind of planetary system, but we are as yet completely incapable of detecting another one like it, Cody. So thanks for that, Cody.

So I would say, unless it got left out by accidents somehow, I'm pretty sure in the episode we did talk about the idea that our current detection methods for exoplanets could very well be biasing our surveys of what types of planets are out there. Though I believe, if I understand correctly, Cody is putting it more strongly here, saying not just as we did that they could be biasing our picture of how common different planetary structures are,

but that they almost certainly are biasing it. Fair enough, all right, here's another one. This one comes to us from Joshua Joshua rides Hi, Robert and Joe, longtime listener, first time writing. Really love the show and the symbiosis you create between all the best subjects. I was listening to the Jupiter episodes and heard you both questioning how big the stone Chronus uranus swallowed in place of the

baby Zeus. Well, I knew I heard about it before, and sure enough, there is a historical sculpture held as being the same stone see attached picture. Apparently apparently this is it also known as the umphal of stone. It's an example of a beatless or sacred stone. The mythological record says the stone was also used by Zeus to decide where the center of the world was no surprise, he picked Delphi and that's where he placed this stone to market and yeah, indeed you can look up images

of this. There's a Wikipedia article on this that has some yeah, decent music, the photographs of them. Um Anyway, they continue. It's certainly bigger than I ever imagined a baby god would be. But I guess when you're dealing with deities it's probably going to be a bit subjective. Thanks guys, keep doing what do you do your friend, Josh? Oh, thanks Josh. It looks kind of like a beautifully decorated giant stone bullet. Here's the question. Was it decorated before

it was ingested by a god or did it? Was it inscribed like this by virtue of being ingested by a god? Also, you're saying not carved by a human in recognition of having been vomited up by Chronus. But it was actually carved by Cronus's guts, like when he swallows a stone it starts making little lacy patterns on the things inside. Yeah, why not? I mean the physiology of the gods has to be something spectacular. Three cheers for god guts. Yeah. Okay, you're ready for Dad Jokes,

as as ready as anyone ever is. Okay. This first message comes from Eden. Eden says, Dear Robert and Joe, in your recent Dad Jokes episode, you' all brought up the lack of a signifier or punctuation mark in written text that conveyed sarcasm. I wanted to shout through my phone that there already is an existing signifier of sarcasm in written text, and it does not ruin the joke to use it. Rules for writing sarcasm have evolved naturally

on the Internet, and we see them every day. In fact, often it is not punctuation so much as a lack of punctuation. It's use as a form of rhetorical speech is described here, and Eden includes a link to a Tumbler post arguing in short that within Tumbler there has evolved a linguistic convention that sentences presented without punctuation can be understood in an ironic or rhetorical manner. So an example kind of like what's used in this post would be a sentence like why did Taco Bell give me

seventeen sauce packets for one taco? The sentence would feel very different depending on whether or not you actually include a question mark at the end of it. If there's a question mark at the end of it, people might be tempted to answer the question to say like, oh, maybe it's because of this, or you know that they could interpret it in different ways. If you don't punctuate it at all, it's somehow kind of understood that this is just like a joking or rhetorical question, and you're

probably exaggerating with the number. I'm I'm, I don't know. Yeah, I'm just kind of a stickler for including your punctuation. I don't know, I I'm. We take a lot of convincing to to get me behind the idea of just not using punctuation on a sentence, or to just in order to use no capitalization, etcetera. You mean you're you're not really familiar with this convention on the internet, or just that you don't approve of it. Oh well, both mean.

I mean if I was more, if I was more accustomed to it and their apps, I'd be more into it. But like my gut reaction is, if we have to choose between sarcasm and proper functuation, we choose punctuation, and we we erase sarcasm from our our culture. Okay um. Eden goes on a lack of punctuation or a period where there should be a question mark, or even all caps are an immediate signifier of sarcasm. Uh, this linguist on the toast can explain it better than I can.

And then again Eden links to a to an article. This is an article by a linguist named Gretchen McCulloch who explains several ways that sarcasm or irony is often conveyed in written language today on the Internet, often by intentionally incorrect spelling, by lack of punctuation and capitalization. All these things can sometimes be used to convey sarcasm or irony.

And yeah, I recognize these conventions. I've seen them on Twitter in places where like a where a statement in a post is denoted as ironic or sarcastic by being presented say, like in all lower case with no punctuation. I mean, I can some of these tools. I guess I can get more behind the all caps thing. I can understand that, and I guess I've probably used that before,

um and any. I guess even intentional misspellings have a place, especially if you're trying to sort of present a a specific dialect, you know, or impersonating specific individual um or um you know, like say there's a particular celebrity you're trying to uh to summon, you know, an image job or to invoke in the writing. I think that would

make sense. I think I've realized one thing I do is that often if I'm talking to somebody I work with and I want to deny I don't think I would ever put this together before, but I've realized I often denote sarcasm or irony by including somewhere in the sentence a business buzzword that I would never actually use in a genuine manner. That that. Yeah, that that could work for sure as a as a signify or something

like that. Yeah, But I guess part of it. I guess a lot of this does come down to, you know, what we talked about before, about how do we know someone is being sarcastic? You know, there's there's tone, and there's context. And if you're if if you're using the buzzwords,

are you perhaps leaning more into context a bit? I don't know, Um yeah, I mean that would rely on the person sort of knowing me well enough to know that these are not terms that I genuinely use, So that probably wouldn't work for like an audience that didn't know who I was, But so, yeah, I guess that that would be a context thing. I think the like denoting sarcasm or irony or rhetorical speech by doing say, all lowercase with no punctuation, that does seem to be

an attempt to use a written version of tone. It's kind of like when you use the silly voice to say something. Yeah, well, I mean I applied people out out there in the field trying to to figure this out. Even if even though there's some of these tools or maybe not for me, uh you know, perhaps they work and if they may communication better in these uh these formats, then you know, I guess it's a win win anyway.

Eden concludes, My point is that we will never have something as straightforward as a single mark to convey sarcasm, because, as you pointed out in the episode, that such an obvious pronouncement might spoil the joke. But we do have unofficial linguistic rules about how we expressed sarcasm through text. Love the show Eaten. Well, that's all good. Thanks for writing in and sharing this. Yeah, this a little much of this is a world I'm not familiar with. All right,

here's one from Carlos. Hey there. Just wanted to add to your dad joke stories. My dad is from Argentina, and often when I was a kid, he would try to translate jokes from Spanish. Almost every time, my dad would arrive at the punchline only to realize that the joke didn't translate. Also, I don't know if this is just me, but I have noticed that curse words and other languages never have the same kick that they do

in one's native language. Slang from Argentina, bay In, how my dad has explained it to me, can be pretty foul. As such, my dad often told dirty jokes or jokes that hinged on bad words, impolite company teachers, pastors, etcetera. Uh So, not only did they usually fall flat, they often were on the vulgar side, embarrassing back then hilarious. Now thanks for everything, Carlos. Nothing better than telling dirty

jokes to the pastor alright. This next message comes to us from Jim and New Jersey about part one of our episodes on post biological intelligence. Jim says Robert and Joe in your Machine Lords of Barnard six, Part one, Joe was reading from Susan Schneider's AI comments comparing silicon versus organic processing, and she mentioned seven manageable chunks being the limitation of a human brain. You mentioned Miller, but

didn't seem to know the reference yet. She referred to Miller as the citation for that seven chunk's claim, but we talked about how we didn't follow up on that. Well, Jim has the explanation here. Jim rights, she's referring to George Miller's cognitive psychological paper the Magic number seven plus or minus two. It's referring to short term memory. Humans can manage about seven things in their short term memory, but it varies per individual by plus or minus two.

The things we can manage are not just numbers, letters, or words. Each slot can manage a single chunk, That is it can be a composite idea with several parts, but we still consider it a whole. I've heard that one of the original tests involved showing chess peace configurations to chess novices and masters. They had a fixed amount of time, let's say sixty seconds to examine the board,

and they were tasked with reconstructing it. The chess masters did much better than the novices, but then instead of actual chess game configurations, both sets of volunteers were shown random chess peace configurations, and the novice says and master has got about the same number of pieces correct. In the chess game portion of the test, a cluster of pieces in the corner would appear as six or seven pieces and require almost all of the short term memory

slots for the novice. However, the chess master would recognize them as a castling position, and this castling chunk would would only require one short term memory slot. Likewise, other familiar chess piece configurations would chunk for the chess master. The chess master doesn't have more memory. The chess master has additional information about the game to chunk it more

efficiently than the novice. Random configurations contained no chunks, so the master could only remember seven pieces, which was the same as the novice. And this makes sense to me because if you have something that's sort of already understood as a whole and and stored in your memory in

a way, you could store it much more efficiently. Like you could probably remember seven whole lines from movies that you've watched a million times and you've got the lines already memorized, but you couldn't remember as easily nearly as much of the dialogue of a film that you were unfamiliar with and being exposed to for the first time. You could remember, Oh, it was this line from that film,

and that's one piece of information in your brain. Yeah. Anyway, Jim goes on, chunking exists in most skills and hobbies. If a concept has its own name, it's probably a chunk. Referring back to Susan Schneider, a human short term memory has seven slots. A computer does not have this limitation Jim in New Jersey, Well, thanks Jim, that that fills

in something very relevant. Yeah, and it also kind of makes spell slots in dungeons and dragons uh less um yeah, less of an abstract concept, right, I mean, it's just like, yeah, you only have so many slots. You can only have so many spells prepared. But each spell is one chunk if you know it well enough. Yeah, all right, And then we one message about spoon. It's not very long. It is just from a listener who signed their email quote.

Just a signature here, so I hope that works. Uh. And the messages saw this and it reminded me of your discussion about the sport. I think actually what you're talking about is our our refusal to discuss the sport. But this listener says you'll enjoy the foon and then attaches a picture. One is a sport. So it's the bowl of a spoon with some times at the end. The foon is a fork in which each of the times ends in a tiny spoon bowl. Yeah, it's it's

pretty weird looking. Even the spork looks weird because it looks like it was Perhaps it's it's it's if it's a like a fine silver spork, which I guess probably it probably exists. But this looks like it was, you know, perhaps created in photoshop. Rob. I can tell you're about to lash out in anger. Let's let's move on to something else. All right, just a uh comes to us from brad Um and it's a response to our episode Gold Medal of the Sun. Dear Robert and Joe, I

am writing about your episode on Gold. I don't believe you mentioned one of Gold's most interesting properties. It's heat shielding prowess. Approximately point eight ounces sixteen grams of gold foil is used in the engine bay of each McLaren F one because it protects the carbon fiber body and the mono cue frame and chassis from heat, the heat of the engine. Are we talking about a car here, by the way, Yeah, I think this is like it's like a racing car of some kind of very very fast,

high performance car. Yeah, because I was thinking of like a like a like a fighter plane. It's like, I don't don't recognize McLaren as as as a company that makes fighter jets, so I don't. So I'm not familiar with this word that mono cock or mono monoc quay, whatever that is. Yeah, Anyway, they continue. This was a choice by Gordon Murray, the chief engineer of the car. The gold foy old lined engine bay is one of two distinct design features of this car. The other big

design distinction is the three seats. Here's a link to the Wikipedia article, which they include for us. Um. I've been listening on and off for a couple of years, but I have started listening frequently since I've been working from home. Keep up the great work, especially with the Weird House Cinema series. Regards Brad. Thanks Brad. All Right, I am looking at the Yep, that's a pretty fancy looking car. Um, let's see. Yes, okay, this is Bond

villain car. Yeah, maybe you have more perspective on this. I've got a question here. Is there a point at which a car starts looking so cool that it goes over the line and it's not cool and instead it's kind of dorky? Um? Maybe? I mean, I don't know you Occasionally, you know, I guess I see a lot

of normal looking cars rolling around, uh, the neighborhood. You know that you usually don't pay much attention to them, and occasionally, like even things like, at least to my eyes, even when there's like a tesla there, I have to really look at it to realize it's a tesla. Um where until I'm finally like, WHOA the student's dropping off his kids at school? And a Tesla. What's that about? Um? But I guess occasionally you do see a car that is like so fancy or so antique that it is

just I I grabbing. UM. I don't know what extent it becomes uncool. I'm I guess it just depends on on how judgmental you are about how people, uh you know, um, how people spend their money and you know, what they choose to drive around in. UM. I guess it's possible, but it would be very, very subjective. Except for the headlights. I'm not sure I would be able to tell which end of this car is the front. Yeah, I don't know.

It's kind of I imagine. I'm not a car person, so I don't really get excited about cars and all. But I think one area I might be able to compare it to would be like my my interest in things like inks and and military aircraft, which, on on one level, I can definitely look at a bomber or a tank and be like, Wow, that's a really cool looking air plants a neat design, And on the other hand, I'm like, that is okay, that's that's a weapon of war that probably or in many cases definitely caused a

lot of death, destruction and misery and pain. Um, But on some level you kind of separate the two when you're considering just pieces of technology like that. Uh. And granted, if you're talking about like a Lamborghini or something, it probably didn't lead to uh, you know, the same level of of death and misery that a uh you know, like an M one tank did. But still you kind of they're probably different ways that we engage in thinking

about it. So we might be able to look at a car and be like, oh, that's a really cool car without thinking is that a wise use of one's money? Is that appropriate to drive on these streets? So what does that say about inequality in our in our world or our nation that sort of thing. Uh? So I don't know not to lay all that on this one particular their car. No, No, it's a it's it's a cool looking car. I will admit if I saw it driving down the street, I would say, Wow, that's a

cool car. I jump right in front of it. It would be an honor could get run over by this car, something I really get excited about. I live close to railroad tracks, and I think one of my favorite things in the world are maintenance vehicles on railroad tracks? Yeah, I get really excited about those. I point them out

to my family and mostly they don't care. But but yeah, if there's some sort of strange vehicle that's cleaning the tracks or enabling the maintenance of the tracks, or even just a truck on the tracks, you know, um that I that that stuff. That's something I really get excited about. So if I imagine there are people who get that level of excited about sports cars and all, and I can, I can acknowledge that I'm right here with you. I

think I have much more enthusiasm about reil based vehicles. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, I still occasionally, Unfortunately I don't have

them every night. I have semi recurring dreams about getting to ride special train cars on like the subway or our local rail system here in Atlanta, though it's usually kind of like an unreal, uh subway system I'm engaging in, but like a chance where oh I get to ride this like open vehicle that's traveling through the subway tunnels or some sort of bizarre say, and it it like it occurs with some regular frequency, and my my dreams I don't always remember it all that well, but yeah,

something about strange train cars. I'm I'm just really drawn to. I thought you were going to say, like a fancy you know, orient express style, uh dining car on Marta. Oh, I would be up for that as well. Yeah, one of my favorite museums. Uh. There are so many great museums in New York, but the Public Transit Rail Museum is so great because it's an actual subway station and it's filled with just different historical train cars and you can just walk through them and explore. It's it's wonderful.

Oh that sounds cool. Maybe one day huh yeah, yeah, one day I'll get back up there. Alright. This next message is about the Fatim Organa episode. This comes from Alexander. Alexander says, Hello, Robert and Joe. Hope you guys are safe and well. I've been a fan of the podcast for some years now, and to someone who listens mostly to comedy shows, your weekly discussions give me real food for thought. I love the informal and really interesting tone

of the conversations and the themes of the episodes. So when hearing the episode about the Fatim Morgana, I couldn't help but think of a minor character of the anime Narudo. And as you guys ask for representations of the shin in media, here you go. Also, English is not my first language, so bear with me. No worries at all, Alexander rob what's a quick refresher on the shin Oh.

A giant clan that lives in the deep and belches up a column of of ectoplasm that forms like fairy castles and cities in the sky, on the horizon, in the in the Sea of Japan. Yeah, amazing, like giant clam monsters burping up bubbles that turn into visions. Yeah. And if you and yeah, you don't want to go following it because it's not really there. You can't really live there, you can't really explore it. Um you know, it's it's fairy fire that will lead you to your

down excellent summary. The message continues. So Naruto is a pretty famous anime that tells the story of Naruto Uzumaki, a young ninja who seeks recognition from his peers and dreams of becoming the the hokag I think the leader of his village, while dealing with the mythical spirit of the Kyubi, a nine tailed fox sealed in his body. The Shin appears during the fourth Shinobi World War Arc,

one of the final ones. The creature is a pretty straightforward representation of the Chinese myth and also has the ability to create mirages and delusions. The giant Clam appears as a personal summon of the second Mizukag, the leader of the hidden village of the Mist, resurrected to fight in the Ninja World War. It's capable of producing a mist that creates a deceptive mirage that renders observers unable to locate the position of the summinar or the clam itself.

In my opinion, it was a very interesting use of the Chinese myth of the Shin. I'm also attaching a link of the clam scene with the English sub so you guys can better understand the role of the creature in the anime. Unfortunately, when I clicked on it, the video is unavailable, so I think snatched by the piracy bots. Those bots that someday they'll pay back. In Alexander's message p S, I would also love to make a suggestion for the future. It would be really cool to hear

an episode about the Amazon, Pink river dolphin. I'm from Brazil and this aquatical mammal is and an extremely interesting animal with a rich mythical background and repercussions on the sociology or anthropology of indigenous groups. Thank you for your great podcast. Keep up the good work. Smiley face emoji which for some reason, when I copy and paste turns into a capital J. I don't know what to do about that. Let's see for starters. UM. I have not

seen this anime in question. Uh, And of course wasn't able to get that link to work, but I am vaguely aware that it exists, so I don't know. MAYBO have to check it out of enjoying a lot of high quality animation these days. Oh and then secondly pink river dolphin. Yeah, I would love to do something on pink river dolphins. Uh, dolphins in general, just a fascinating topic. UM. In a recent listener mail, we listen we heard, We asked everyone, it's like, hey, what's some relaxing music you dig?

We heard from a couple of people. I'm not going to read their complete emails, but I would just want to mention some of the the music that they recommended. H William, responding on the discussion module, said that they too are fans of Biosphere that we brought up, but also mentioned another artist that I dig, Rook Schnouse, as well as an artist by name of William Basinski, who I think I've listened to a little bit before. I think they're known for these like using degenerating tapes um

to create interesting soundscapes. Oh, that's interesting. One of my favorite things actually that that the Internet is good for is recordings of dying sound playing chips that are implanted in greeting cards that play music. So there are a lot of really good ones there. There's one that I used to listen to all the time. It was the Happy Birthday Song, but it was of course not able to quite produce the clarity and crispness and power that it once did when it was first purchased, so it

rendered this absolute dirge of death for your birthday. Another one that I think I shared with you not too long ago was playing the Baja Mens who Let the Dogs Out? But as the machines spiraled down to its doom, the who let the Dogs Out chorus became increasingly forlorn. Yeah, yeah, that was a good one for sure. Um, let's see they speaking of which is not really decayed um audio loops or anything. But I'm also a big fan of Steve Reich's music for eighteen musicians if anyone out there

is looking for something to try out. But what William also mentions, uh Billow observatory that I'm not familiar with, and also brings up, of course Brian Eno, especially Brian ENO's work with Robert Fripp. Love Brian Eno. Yes, yeah, absolutely. In fact, we heard from another listener by the name of Jarry who wanted to write you in just about you Know, um that they that they basically go on at length here about how great you Know's work is

and lists list some stuff to check out. I'm not going to go into all of it here, but they do pinpoints some of the big ones, like music for airports, atmospheres, and soundtracks. I'm a big fan personally of what music music for films that has a or whatever it was called, where it's like little bits of of soundtrack score for

non existent films that he put together. I'm pretty sure we've talked on the show before about how we both agreed that music for airports should actually be played in airports instead of whatever god awful racket that they're pumping out of, like the TVs they've got up in there too. If you run an airport, please don't have TVs running in the terminal areas. That is just a recipe for incredible stress and misery. Yeah. I don't know why. I

don't know why music for airports was ignored by airports. Uh. They also mentioned, you know, his work with Cluster we've talked about. I know that you're you're a fan of Cluster as well. Um, he's worked he worked on Ambient to the Plateau of Mirror, worked on that with Harold Budd, who's another big name in ambient sound. Um. Yeah, there's just there's just so much, so much great stuff that the you knows put out over the years, and still

it was putting out great ambient material. What I apologize if I missed it? Did? Did you already mentioned Bowie's Eno collaboration period? No? No, but that's that's amazing stuff as well. Does that include the Bowie album Low? Oh, I'm not I don't know that. To answer to that, Wait, Seth has chimed in, Seth has chimed in. Yes, it does Low is one of my favorite David Bowie albums. It's not it's not as fun as some of his

other albums. It's very uh dark and it it has the feeling of looking at the twentieth century from a hermetically sealed chamber through a curved piece of glass. But it is. It is a dark and beautiful album, and a lot of the electronic and synthesizer work I think, especially on the second half of the album, feels very very like dark you know. Yeah. One of the things about you know, of course, is when I think of you know, I do think of his ambiat work. But

I did a lot of material. He put out a lot of material if you want to if anyone out there wants to hear like the funkier side of Eno. DJ Food put out a wonderful mix eleven years ago now who titled more Volts the Funky Eno. If you look it up you can still find it. DJ Food has it hosted on SoundCloud, and uh, I haven't listened to it in a little bit, but I remember it being a lot of fun, just a lot of of cool, funky beats from Brian Eno working with various people like

David byrne Um uh and and so forth. Yeah, but also very versatile, because yes, there there is that funky side. But then music for airports is just the most calming thing I have ever heard. I mean, is is there any series of sounds that better puts the brain at at peace? Yeah? Yeah? How mad can you be when you're listening to music for airports? Yeah? It's like, Okay, I missed my connection. You know it's gonna be all right. All right, looks like we have some weird how cinema

email as well here Joe. That's right. So this first message comes from Jim. Jim says, hey, Robert and Joe, you mentioned on the listener mail that sometimes you should do a Ken Russell film on weird House cinema. Uh. There are many great ones from Ken Russell, but my recommendation is Layer of the White Worm nineteen nine eight. I don't think you're right about that year, Jim. I'm I'm pretty sure that is wrong, but I will be corrected if I'm wrong about that. Rob. Maybe you can

look it up while I'm reading this. It's adapted from a novel by Bram Stoker and as several well known stars Hugh Grant, Peter Capaldi, Katherine Oxenberg. It's about a British vampuric snake cult. It's fun, funny, sexy, lightly scary. I think it might be available on to be right now if you have that app. Thanks for all your work, Jim and Jim. Yes, you you know our strike zone. I love this movie definitely one that I've been planning to feature at some point. Uh. Layer of the White Worm.

In fact, I thought I had mentioned it on a recent weird House cinema because we were talking about blasphemous like crucifixion scenes and movies, and Lair of the White Worm has a really good like uh snake demon, blasphemous crucifixion vision. Yeah, and I looked it up. It's a film so close one decade off. Yeah, it's been a while since I've seen it, but I remember being a lot of fun. It has a Yeah, it's a uh sexy and weird and has a really cool worm puppet

in it. Yeah, just glorious, absolutely great. All right, here's a bit of email comes to us from Emily. Hi, Robert and Joe. Let me start off by saying, I've been loving the steady stream of stuff toble your mind content coming through my pod catcher, especially weird how Cinema. Y'all killing the game? Please continue anyway, I'm writing with the suggestion for weird House. I feel like you guys have brought it up before, but I don't remember the context.

So maybe this is one of your two watch list. This is on your two watch list already. Nine seventy two is Silent Running, directed by Douglas Trumbull. Has been on my personal to watch list since high school, and my husband and I are just getting around to why watching it recently. I'd love to get you guys this take on it. My favorite thing about the experience of watching fifty year old sci fi movies is sitting with

that feeling, uh, with your disbelief. Can't quite stay suspended as a modern watcher, because the film depicts technology is basically quote magic dressed in greebals and blinking lights um hand waving away exactly how the machine does what it's shown doing, like the robots being advanced enough to understand natural speech while also running on basically punch card programs, which are themselves sophisticated enough to enable said robots to

perform surgery and play poker. I don't know if general audiences in the nineteen seventies would have felt that same challenge to the suspension of disbelief, or if I just learned too much ding dang science from the wealth of accessible science content available in this day and age, including in No Small Park this very podcast. Anyway, keep out the great work and stay safe out there. Looking forward to the next batch of podcasts. Regards Emily, I think

the main takeaway from Silent Running is just surgery. Isn't that hard? Basically anybody could do it. Yeah, with the right punch card. But no, Emily, You're in luck. We did a whole episode about Silent Running sometime in nineteen I believe, Yeah, June eight, nineteen, just simply titled Silent Running.

It's one of the episodes that we did a series of episodes that we did with They were ultimately kind of a precursor to Weird House Cinema, where we were like, what do we need to do to get away with talking about weird movies on this podcast, And you know, we realized, well, certain types of movies lent themselves well to that kind of discussion, because like two thousand and

one of Space Odyssey's Silent Running. These are films with a lot of science in them to discuss, you know, whether the science works ride or is presented in a way that makes sense. It's said, that's all part of the discussion. Yeah, but obviously things have evolved since then. You know, if we're gonna be putting out five episodes a week, at least one of them we're just gonna talk about movies. Yeah. But indeed, Silent Running great film.

I love it. I'll always of it and I recommend it to anybody out there who wants to, uh, you know, seek out a weird, cool, well acted, um piece of sci fi cinematic history. A great soundtrack too. I love the Joe Bias tracks. All right, Well, it looks like our mail bot is shutting down, so we need to go ahead and shut down this episode as well. But we thank everybody for writing in. We didn't get to get to everything, but you know, we'll we'll try and

get to it next week. Um. Even if we don't read your mail on Listener mail, we still read it when it comes in. So keep it coming. Your your your your comments, your thoughts, your corrections, your ideas for the future, thoughts on Stuff Table your Mind episodes, thoughts on Weird House Cinema episodes, thoughts on Artifact episodes, etcetera. Uh, we just want to hear from y'all. Absolutely keep it coming,

you know. Actually, I thought when we switched to doing episodes once a week that that would mean we we ended up having time to read all listener mail. It did not work out that way. I feel like we still don't even get to have off of it. So apologies if your message has not been read, please don't take it personally. But we we love all the email

we get. We really do. That's right. In the meantime, if you want to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind listener mail, it tends to publish on Mondays. I think that's its standard date of publication. Wednesdays will do an Artifact unless we need to preempt it. Tuesdays and Thursdays are our core Stuff to Blow Your Mind episodes, Friday is Weird How Cinema, and then we

have evolved episode over the weekend. That's right. Hook your ears up, download it all, listen, do as we command you, but anyway, huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us to potentially have a piece of email featured on a future Listener Mail episode, to provide feedback to this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hi, you can always email us at contact at stuff to Blow

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